School Turnarounds

Now, it’s the principals’ turn: We’ve shared videos of multi-classroom leaders and team teachers telling why they love their jobs in the Metro Nashville schools that have created an Opportunity Culture. Hear why the principals at Bailey STEM Magnet Middle School and Buena Vista Elementary call an Opportunity Culture “sustainable,” “innovative,” and the “it factor” in changing the game for students and teachers. These principals’ schools use multi-classroom leadership, setting up the feedback loops from team teaching, collaboration, and teacher-leadership that they and their teachers revel in.

“Absolutely the most powerful benefit is student achievement”

“You make sure that every single child is in a top-quality classroom”

“Teachers are applying at newfound rates to be a part of this work”

And watch this blog! We’ll have more videos to come in 2015 from other Opportunity Culture sites, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Cabarrus County, N.C., and Syracuse, N.Y.

In response, the authors offer six recommendations for district leaders seeking to improve their recruitment, selection, and placement of school principals:

Make the job more appealing—and manageable. Give principals the power to lead, including authority over key staffing decisions, operations, and resources. And give them a cadre of teacher-leaders to share the load today—and fill the pipeline for tomorrow (more on that below).

Pay great leaders what they’re worth. Compensation must be commensurate with the demands, responsibilities, and risks of the job. Principals should earn considerably more than other school staff with less responsibility and should be duly compensated for producing success.

Take an active approach to recruitment. Develop criteria to identify promising candidates inside and outside of the district. Actively seek out those individuals. Woo them when necessary. Identify and prepare internal candidates systematically—and early—and eliminate barriers that discourage high-potential candidates.

Evaluate candidates against the competencies and skills that research shows successful principals demonstrate. Then create rubrics for judging candidates against those competencies. Train raters to use the rubrics effectively.

Public Impact has long focused on the importance of school leadership, especially when districts attempt to turn around failing schools—check our list of resources below.

And we see real promise for bettering the conditions for principals—making the role more appealing and strengthening the much-discussed, truly important pipeline of future leaders—through our Opportunity Culture work. Opportunity Culture schools extend the reach of excellent teachers to more students, for more pay, within budget. One way to do this is by creating the multi-classroom leader (MCL) role—in which an excellent teacher continues to teach while leading a team of teachers, with plenty of school-day time for planning, collaboration, and providing daily on-the-job professional learning to the team.

MCLs can help principals tremendously. These teacher-leaders mean principals no longer bear sole responsibility for the leadership and evaluation of all teachers in the building. And while most MCLs take the job because they want to continue teaching, some will find the principal role appealing, creating a pipeline of future principals experienced as instructional leaders.

We all know how much school leaders matter. Let’s put some remedies into action—starting with these.

Blended learning holds unique promise to improve student outcomes dramatically. Schools will not realize this promise with technology improvements alone, though, or with technology and today’s typical teaching roles. In a new Public Impact policy brief, A Better Blend: A Vision for Boosting Student Outcomes with Digital Learning, which we co-authored with Joe Ableidinger and Jiye Grace Han, we explain how schools can use blended learning to drive improvements in the quality of digital instruction, transform teaching into a highly paid, opportunity-rich career that extends the reach of excellent teachers to all students and teaching peers, and improve student learning at large scale. We call this a “better blend”: combining high-quality digital learning and excellent teaching.

New study guides—based on real examples from educators—and video clips to help you develop your team & yourself in Instructional Leadership & Excellence are now available on OC's website! https://t.co/AeylLywjnb

North Pitt High School is one of the schools where @CollegeBoard @NCSSM and @PublicImpact are piloting remotely located #MultiClassroomLeadership, bringing a teaching team leader from NCSSM to rural school districts. Read more from @reflectornews https://t.co/HYPumZGkw7 #nced

In @VanceCoSchools @DrJackson06 emphasizes giving teachers the space to innovate & try new, research-based ideas—just as he is by leading his district with research-supported #OpportunityCulture! How has innovation made a difference in your school? https://t.co/pFxuBQ3PVy